The forecasters have been adamant that this was going to be a very strong Winter storm from the get go. Once this thing showed up on the forecast timeline, it didn't seem like they wavered on the "when" of it much at all. While they were very cautious about snowfall amounts and exactly where the rain/snow line would be, they never backed down from the predictions of high wind and likely blizzard conditions anywhere there was a few flakes of snow to push around.